Posts Tagged ‘health care’

How many “Minute Clinics” are there in the U.S.?

June 28, 2012

Trick question.

CVS operates about 550 in store clinics under the the Minute Clinic brand umbrella.

More broadly, there are about 1,200 total in-store clinics … run by CVS, Walgreen, Wal-Mart, Kroger and Target.

Ken’s Take: These are great providers of routine health care … I’d like to see them spread like wild fire … and, I’d be all for government run “free clinics” in under-served urban and rural area.

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Maybe, the next social media win will be healthcare.

May 25, 2012

Buried as the last of  7 Reasons Why Facebook IPO Was A Bust, Forbes’ writer Rich Karlgaard raised a point that caught my eye:

Mass social media is a crock. It is an inherent contradiction.

I like LinkedIn more than Facebook because it  has a special purpose and therefore doesn’t feel like a time waster.

FWIW, I predict the next huge win in social media will be in health care.

As a health care consumer, I want chat with people who are just like me.

With similar gene structures.

Who suffer from similar maladies as well as the genetic potential for similar maladies.

When linking up with my “health friends” I also want a 100% guarantee that my social network won’t betray my health confidences.

Would I trust Facebook to keep these confidences? Never.

Think about it.

How many times have you Googled for medical advice, e.g. what to do for poison ivy?

And, how many folks have built ad hoc digital support structures when a friend or relative  was facing a tough medical situation?

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Get out your wallet: CBO says ObamaCare to cost twice the original estimates.

March 14, 2012

According to a new projection released by the Congressional Budget Office, ObamaCare will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade,  rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.

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The CBO now projects  that more people will be obtaining insurance through Medicaid than it estimated a year ago at a greater cost to the government, but fewer people will be getting insurance through their employers or the health care law’s new subsidized insurance exchanges.

According to the Washington Examiner:

Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation.

The most egregious of the accounting tactics was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO’s standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama’s pledge that the legislation would cost “around $900 billion over 10 years.”

When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.

The projection for 2022, the last year available, indicate that the cost is likely to exceed $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Team Obama advertised.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

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